The Cost of Waterloo Software Engineering

I can testify that this (systematically alternating between school and work throughout your undergraduate studies) makes you a better engineer. I learned about it when I moved to Germany, and it shows in some of my colleagues who chose to do it.<p>This is not an option in a lot of countries, including my own (Morocco). The closest thing to this system that I did was to convince my computer science department to let me take a long pause from school (January to September) and move to Brazil where I found a good tech company that paid me for my ridiculously long internship. I came back with a very clear idea of my strengths and weaknesses when working on large and critical software systems, and I designed my last semester around these new insights.<p>Granted, most people achieve similar goals through traditional internships routes, but it helps to be able to see you work live on beyond summer and be able to identify medium term regressions, follow on on other use cases, and account for the fact that other people will be taking up the torch soon.

I find HN fetish with UoW to be interesting , which has been my data point to be very skeptical about believing everything I read here.<p>1) UoW has a really low requirement for entry, of my class many students went to study at UoW most of them had average to below average grade, compared to Oxbridge UoW has a joke of an entry requirement, I later learned they have a very high dropout rate after first year - which explains things, but I think is disingenuous to their students. School should be a place of learning not a lab for natural selection.<p>2) I drew a spreadsheet for Unis across the global all from singapore,UK,US and Canada. Any engineer graduating with an average GPA working full time for 1 year and having done internships in uni will have earned more money than what this links shows.<p>3) The strong internship requirement means students who cannot find one within four months of joining uni is likely to fail his semester even if he is academically gifted. My UoW friend failed a year due to this stupid requirement, in most other universities it will not be an end to your stay if you fail to get a job within the first 4 months.<p>4) UoW has really bad reputation in the academical world and ppl doing basic research ( look up UoW ranking )<p>5) Their fees are only competitive if you are from canada, they are much more expensive for international students compared to elite universities in the UK.<p>6) Universities historically should have weak ties with industries. The reason for this is independence. I know for a fact that UoW has strong ties with microsoft in the past and used to push .NET stuff on their students ! how do you expect a university to be intellectually honest if they are attached to a corporation ?<p>I could add more but I am running out of time.

It might be obvious to American readers, but I had not idea that University of Waterloo mentioned here was in Canada, and not in Belgium.

Dang, I was honestly expecting a Napoleonic analogy for software-design &#x2F; project-management

<p><pre><code> After 5 long and difficult years, I’m extremely proud to say that I’m a Waterloo grad </code></pre> Every Waterloo grad I&#x27;ve ever met has gone through their coop program, which adds an extra year to their undergrad degree: <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/find-out-more/co-op/how-co-op-works" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uwaterloo.ca&#x2F;find-out-more&#x2F;co-op&#x2F;how-co-op-works</a>

I went through an EE co-op in UofGuelph, another university in the area. It was harder to get positions without the local prestige of the Waterloo brand, but it was still a great experience that convinced me that I liked software more than hardware.

The Case for and against U Waterloo<p>I did my undergrad as well as my master&#x27;s in Mechatronics at UWaterloo. Thought I&#x27;d pitch in to shed some light on two of the key themes of this conversation, Co-op and Academic research.<p>1. Co-op - The Waterloo 4 month alternating Co-op program has its pros and cons. On one hand you get the chance to go out and sample a bunch of different kinds of jobs (if you proactively choose to do so), travel, fund your own education without drowning in student loans and get a taste for what engineering outside the classroom might be like. Currently with a large number of start-ups in Waterloo a lot of Co-op students work with start-ups which, for this forum, should undoubtedly be a good thing.<p>On the other hand, the obsession with co-op chips away from the culture of learning that a University should harbor. I remember freaking out about jobs, interviews and my resume from the 3rd week of classes in first year. It seems to be a common theme here. You spend most of your actual time on campus, preparing to get off campus and it creates less of an impetus to pursue deeper learning and research. That being said, as with everything in life, you get out of it what you put into it.<p>2. Academic Research -<p>Most schools, In my opinion, have good pockets and bad pockets. The fact that the model of scientific research worldwide is pretty broken is well known. Industrial partnerships drive research because that&#x27;s where the money is. At least until we all become millionaires and donate money back to our Universities for no-strings-attached research :D It also depends on the professor. Some professors choose to fund themselves off government grants that give them less money and more freedom while others choose to work with large companies like GM on industrial research projects. You need to find the professor that aligns with your interests. I was lucky enough to work on robotic path planning and multi-robot cooperation without any industrial interests breathing down my neck but that doesn&#x27;t always happen of course.<p>The good thing about a Waterloo master&#x27;s is that it is guaranteed to be fully funded by the University and, based on merit, you can choose to do either a course-based master&#x27;s or a thesis-based master&#x27;s. This is unlike American universities because we drive our own research for the entirety of our program. Being just a master&#x27;s student I&#x27;ve published as a first author in most of the major robotics conferences and journals (ICRA, IROS, JFR, TRO, WAFR) and not many master&#x27;s students in other Universities have the opportunity to do that.

Drexel University has a similar program requiring five years to complete. However the co-op&#x27;s are for six months at a time which is infinitely more useful to both the student and employer then more frequent shorter co-op&#x27;s.